Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (approximately 261%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (261%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (3%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.